


Bleed that Arrow

by thumbipeach



Series: Falling from the Fig Tree (Greek Myth AU) [3]
Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Purple Hyacinth - Ephemerys & Sophism (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, And you all thought I was above this, Angst, Can you tell I lost steam towards the end, Crack, Greek myth AU, It’s vague and that’s fine, Kywi isn’t in this because they’re dead, Lauki sneaks in a bit but only for my sanity, M/M, My newest creation ‘HuLa’ is in this, absolutely no beta we die like Lune’s convicts, alternate universe - gods and goddesses, are you proud of me, asgdhdhdddj, because I’m doing this, cursed hours abound, cursed ship y’all, i really don’t have anything to say, now THIS is crack, please end my suffering, someone really needs to reconsider giving me writing privileges, sorry y’all, there is nothing for you here, think again, you know the drill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:06:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25370602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thumbipeach/pseuds/thumbipeach
Summary: Run it dry, let the crimson fade, and only then consider that your actions have consequences.—(Or: I don’t even have a creative summary for this).(Hermarch Aphrodite and Ares AU (please don’t kill me)).
Relationships: Hermann/Oliver March, Lauren Sinclair/Kieran White (background)
Series: Falling from the Fig Tree (Greek Myth AU) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1793035
Comments: 10
Kudos: 18





	Bleed that Arrow

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t think there’s any songs I can give you that will make reading this worthwhile

_ Betrothal _

__

  
  


The God of the Forge is set to marry the Goddess of Love.

In that itself is some trouble—he knows quite well the rumors of her insufferable nature, how she’d turn her head and mortals and gods alike would fall at her dainty feet. And for one such as him—worn, weary, lines crinkling his mouth and cheeks—he was sure he would not be the one she bent her knees for.

But he accepts it. Because he doesn’t have a choice, but he tells himself it’s because he is kind.

That is a lie; to do this does a disservice to both her and himself. He is no more kinder than the King across the tides, claiming the most beautiful girl in the world for himself out of hubris. He wants something that is not deserving of him, and she knows this only too well.

And so, he takes her delicate, varnished hand in his own burnt one, and tries to hide his hurt in the face of her repulsion.

“It’s crossed my mind that I don't even know your name.” He says, to lighten the tension as the Goddess of Marriage blesses their loathed union.

She scoffs, tossing soft coral waves of hair over her shoulder, white peonies dotting the strands like stars and falling rotten at her feet.

“Lila. But don’t expect to be saying it much.” Her smile is disarming, warm and cold like those that form tornadoes of conflict and horrid promises set in her teeth. His foreboding does not wane at this; it rises like the sun and peaks over the cavernous howling in his bones.

“And yours?” She asks dismissively, her plump lips appealing. He frowns.

“Hermann.”

“I don’t suppose you have anything else?”

“Nothing more to it than my name.”

“Well then. How unfortunate.”

And with that, he seals their fate in his own follies, and the two most opposing forces are tied.

Until they fall.

All’s fair in love and war, after all.

  
  
  
  


_ Chaining _

  
  
  


There are scars.

There will  _ always  _ be scars, for whether he brands himself or not is not his choosing. When he presides over the mortals’ fight he can only manage to scrape by, barely closing his wrists and stripped fingertips around a blade before his fate is seared into his otherwise pristine skin again, and again, and again.

But still he brings himself up, looks upon a field of blood and dry, arid grass and feels nothing but the lingering swell of victory.

They ask him if he will leave. It does appear that the mortals do not have a particular affinity for war, and thus they despise his presence in turn, knowing that it means death innumerable, bodies of their loved ones joining the hated, the ones they would not shed even a drop over in favor of their own selfishness.

He grazes the scar on his cheek in scarlet, jam-stained fingers, the one that never goes away no matter how much he tries to hide it, and says that yes, he will leave. He will return to the pantheon and take up his mantle there, and never grace their fields again.

That is a lie. He is chained to the fight, as he always will be, and they know this. Know that as long as they keep squabbling he will keep returning, again and again and again like scar tissue to unmarred skin.

They know what a liar the God of War is.

———

Living isn’t so bad, for a while.

They do their own thing, relatively. She stays in the sun, with burgeoning roses of all colors and cherubic nymphs that feed her berries, indulge her wishes for bread and cakes and delicate lace, frivolous and undaunting, and he stays in the pit of the volcano, hammering away at a blade of steel he dully wishes he could use to quell his heart’s incessant pounding.

Occasionally she’ll come down, red smeared over her lips, and eye him keenly, her fingers dancing around the diamonds he makes to placate her.

“They are beautiful.”

“Could you not try and flatter me?” He turns to her, and the fire behind him rages none-too-quietly, in spurts of red and orange that catch in her hair and make her look like a disguised devil.

“I’m  _ not.”  _ She insists, and it’s so earnest that for a fleeting moment, smaller than dying embers, he almost believes that she is sincere.

But then he recalls the years he’s been here and she up above, with her love and her adorations, and knows deep down in his own gnarled heart that Love will never be sincere.

So, he simply tosses the diamond towards her, and she catches it in her dainty, perfect fingers, still shining the way they did when they were wed.

“Take it. Put it in your hair.”

She frowns at him, then bows mockingly.

“Alright.”

He knows she won’t. 

“By and by…” she looks back at him, roses falling in front of her eyes and masking them like shards of glass. He pauses in front of a hammer, throwing her a question at the odd, prying tone.

“...they say that the God of War will return soon.”

Hermann pauses. 

“And what am I supposed to do with that information?”

Lila shrugs, her graceful shoulders turning under her creamy peplos, washed in almost bone-like ivory and stitched with narcissus flowers.

“I’d thought about it for a bit. Guess I don’t really know why I told you.”

Then, with a beguiling wave of her fingers, she is gone, back to the place she belongs, and he is alone with cold steel again.

He wonders if he’s gone and done the fool thing, if somehow in a blind rage where milk clouds his eyes and static dulls his senses, he went and fashioned chains for himself out of his blacksmith’s iron. If he’s brought the flame upward only for it to fasten around his ankles and drag him back downward.

  
  


_ Arrival _

  
  


He meets the famed God of War on a lonely, sun-dipped night, one like that of so many others.

“Hello there.”

He whirls around, almost branding his foot in coal, to find a young man staring at him.

He is a stark, pale contrast to the black and bleeding scarlet that surrounds him; his skin is supple and milk white, his hair a tousled ginger and eyes a quiet, calm ocean, and if it were not for the lacerations that stroke his toned body like harp strings Hermann would be sure he was an angel and not who he suspected him to be.

But what captivated him most was the long, relatively thin scar adorning his face like a tear, dropping from a placid eye as if it were drawn there with paint. He finds himself wanting to ask where he got it, wanting to know it’s story as if it were inscribed in a stone tome, scrawling words etched in permanence across the other man’s flesh.

Instead, he draws himself up, sets his stance into one of guarded indifference, his face pitched in a familiar scowl and hands folded like stacks of marble behind his back, holding down just as much. He levels the newcomer with a cold glare.

"Did you need something of me?"

The God pauses, searching. His gaze is not wary, like Herman had expected. No, it is rather accepting, rather open. It startles him, catches him out of sorts. It doesn't  _ feel  _ right, somehow, not in his volcanic cavern of doubt.

"I'm here for something." He looks slightly abashed, and his fingers twist themselves in gesture, indicating a long width in front of him.

"A sword. I'd like one."

Herman's eyebrows raise high on his brow, and he grits his teeth. 

"So you're here for my work."

The man nods. "I'm afraid so."

He can't quite place the anger he feels. Why did he think anything otherwise, then?   


They all either want something for him, or take the things he is not willing to give. Why would he believe that the personification of War itself would be above taking and taking and taking, razing to the ground all he wants for himself?

"I have money, you know."

He stops him, turning back to regard the young God in suspicion. "Do you?"

He smiles a bit, the scar on his face stretching with the way his pink lips curl forward, a smile rather like a gentle tiger.

"I have some gold. Would it suffice?"

Herman considers him for a moment. Then, reluctantly, he nods.

"It would, I suppose."

Then, he pauses.

"What's your name, young man?"

He smiles again, dimples forming in white cheeks, and once again he is an immortal dove imprisoned in raging fire around, bloodied white feathers dipped in screaming orange and canary dye.

"Come on. Surely you know me!" He spreads his fingers, and suddenly the God who had looked like a meek sparrow now read like a broad hawk, his arms thrown about in youthful vigor but his eyes sharp with wars weathered.

But Herman clicked his tongue. Suppressed the growing smile on his lips.

"Hubris can be even a God's downfall, boy." He shook his head as sparks fell around them, the volcano working, the cogs turning in the great forge yet.

Then, the God acquiesces. Holds out a hand scarred with pink.

"March."

———

He'd walked here.

He'd trodden over thorns, rocks washed in seafoam and boulders encased in snow, just to descend into the belly of a raging volcano, the belly of another less daunting beast.

He'd heard stories about the one he was journeying to meet. The God of the Forge, his misery and how it made him torrential and unpredictable, a war in his own right. He finds himself rather excited to meet him.

When he does, he manages to keep his face calm as looks at the visage that stares back at him, old and worn and  _ riddled  _ with burns and signs of torture. He wants to do something about it, the horrible tension he can see in the way his himation drags on the charred rock and the way his shoulders must rise from a slouch, but doesn't know why.

He doesn't understand why he has the urge to fix something rather than ignite it, for once.

But he scoffs to himself, adopts an unassuming stature, and pitches his deal.

It's true enough, he needs a sword. His old weapon shattered with his heart as looked upon countless thousands, dead by hands only led by his influence. It fell into grass and melted into molten metal, tangy with the iron taste of blood.

He needs a weapon. 

That's all he's ever known.

  
  


_ Negotiation _

  
  


"What exactly do you need?"

March shrugs, a movement of broad, lithe shoulders. He sits on a bed of rock beside the hollow of a pit of shifting lava, as Herman shifts rods of iron and steel in neat rows on a bench of coal. He watches his rough and worn fingers move, callouses catching on the crevices of rock.

"Something sharp." He hums noncommittally, running a hand through his hair.

"That's horrible. Give me something better than  _ that." _

His voice is rough, brittle, like stone scraping stone, as he turns to him with irritation.

“Fine, then. Make me a blade.” And he gets up, his white himation dusted with soot, striding over to the other man and standing in front of him. He is slightly shorter, but it feels like he has the upper hand. Of course he does—no matter where, in a fight of steel or one of mere words, he is still the God of War.

“Make me a blade that sings when I strike you with it.” He points a finger, and he watches as the formidable god reels back, rod in his fingers poised to strike the thing that challenges him.

“Make me a blade that I can wield in war,” he says, eyes a stilled ocean.

“Make me a blade that I can fight with.” 

And with that he leaves, no flowers to his name. 

But, he imagines, that with the deal and promise of a weapon sharp enough to lacerate his sins from his body, he has left something behind in Herman’s forge as well. Something he’d rather have not imparted so soon in the game.

  
———

For the first time in their marriage, which, to be fair, has spanned a bout of time that appears insufferably long, Lila finds her husband animated with his work.

Typically the huffs from the forge come with a dual state of somber resignation, as though he has committed himself to a life of work he did not want. 

But then, she supposes, she did too, in a way.

“You look happy.”

She announces herself with a breath of orchids and cloying perfume, but the one thing she despises most is that it is often muted, her presence, with the consuming scent of ash and smoke. He turns to her, and she still grimaces at the burns on his face, the displeasing set to his body that she loathes, has always loathed.

“Need I a reason to be?”

Lila shakes her head, a soft, deceptive smile playing on her lips, rouged with red paint. 

“Not really. It’s just odd. What happened?”

He scoffs. “Since when have you shown an interest in my work?”

She considers him for a second. Then, she reaches out a hand, touching his skin lightly, testing something. 

It’s cold. 

She reels backward, flicking her wrist as if to stave off the icy chill. Then, she looks at him blankly, the waves of her hair framing her delicate face, where vixen-charm and devilish disregard dance like twin stars in her eyes.

“No. I don’t know why I bother.”

She looks down curiously at his fingers as they work on a rod of steel, melting metal and pouring it over and over again, reforged glass, scarlet, ugly waves of molting salamander skin, bubbling incessantly.

“No diamond for today?”

“No. Leave me be, Lila.”

She huffs, and disappears, wondering vaguely if her suspicions were entirely unfounded.

  
  


_ Repetition _

He comes back again, day by day, as the sun rotates another cycle and the dawn flows like a broken egg yolk over calm clouds and stormy waters. 

Every new day, he asks no questions. Sometimes he sits and watches as something forms in his hand, expression blank as always. Other times he pops in briefly, gracing the forge with the scent of something slightly tinged with grass and fields of flowers, then leaves him wanting for something he refuses to name.

And then, as the days pass, he finds something changing ever so slightly. 

When he takes out the coal and the flame in his routine, he finds almost unwillingly that he’s anticipating the young man’s presence. That he’ll smell the familiar tang of war and he’ll know then, that his colleague has come, decked in white and scarred still, the line of the one he knows, has come to recognize as a signature idiosyncrasy, still branded on his face and moving as he smiles, greets him. 

“Do you ever go outside?”

That one question pierces the air and brings him back to the reality of their situation--that he is bound here by duty and other by something he could call the same.

He turns to March, levels him with a gaze that could have cut through the humidity like perfect slices of almond cake.

“Should I have the need to?”

March  _ laughs,  _ and it’s a thing of wind chimes and striking gold, of sparks meeting sparks in joyous music. 

“You should set foot out of this place once, Hermann!” He smiles. “You might find something you like outside.”

He coughs as dust billows up from the branding iron, swatting away dying embers from the air.

“I don’t think I’d find anything out there for me.”

March raised an eyebrow.

“Try.”

Herman paused, picking up more metal, his hands burning with the boiling heat.

“Well, my wife, for one.”

“Oh.”

And was it him, or did March sound almost disappointed? Almost--

“Your wife.”

“I come down here to avoid her.”

“Ah.”

Herman grit his teeth, knitting them together like sewn strings, and they glint in the firelight.

“I hate her.”

March shook his head. “I think you’re wrong about that.”

He whirls on him. “I  _ know  _ myself.”

“Do you?” March looks up, up, up into the spout of the volcano, where fire will spew one day, cover the world in a blanket of heat and kill innumerable thousands, all succumbing to the folly of excess.

“People always think they do. The mortals especially.” He looks down again, his palms flat on the burnished rock, and his body tilts backwards until the lithe curve of it is illuminated in moonshine filtering through the crevices. 

“They think they know themselves.” He stares him down, a vulture, and the great God of Fire is reduced to nothing more than a deer faced with the brightest of lights.

“--and then they fall.”

He leaves him with that, the sinking feeling in his heart and the faint stirring in his belly. Butterflies, harps, they twinge with the lingering music of battle.

———

The sword is finished.

Of course it doesn’t take too long. It’s a simple thing, sharp on the end that matter, the end that pierces.

He hands the thing to March, watches his eyes light up in something akin to awe, watches the burgeoning excitement on his face.

Then, He hears the blade cry like a violin, and steps back just as wind from the knife shuffles past his shoulders.

”It sings when I strike you with it!”

The proclamation is given with the extra gift of a grin, all white teeth and sincerity, and Hermann knows now what he’s been trying to ignore.

The God pays his dues, counts out the golden coins that ultimately, in the grand scheme of a shifting, eternal forge, mean nothing to him.

As he watches his back shift out of the hollow, the scars rippling as he walks, he finds himself having to hold back the set of his teeth, the urge to run and spin the younger man around so he can see his perfect face once more, the visage that is made perfect only by the apparent imperfections, the long scar and near sadistic lust for human blood that he tries so hard to conceal.

But he doesn’t do that. Years of marriage to Love itself has taught him patience with it.

So he thinks, that night.

———

Something new begins, after weeks, months, centuries without the enigma that is War.

He hears the shuffling of cloth against grain, stone dusted lightly with white, and he turns, only for March to fall into his arms, pressing himself to his body in strange fervor.

At first the fire is quelled in bewilderment, shock and astonishment, but then he pulls back and finds a red not due to fire on his chest, his legs and pooling at his back.

“What the  _ hell--” _

“Please.” He pants, the sound searing itself into the walls of the cavern.

“If you never finish that blade--”

“What--”

He drags him over to the branding iron, his hands running over his wounds, trying to blaze them through, cauterize them the way he does metal and iron and gold and rust. It doesn’t work, it doesn’t and he knows this, knows that this is not his bid.

“How did this happen, you fool?”

And the bloody thing, with all the tongue and cheek and nerve to rival all the Gods in existence, he merely smiles, managing to throw up his hands the way he did when he entered his domain and left him with nothing but wanting in his aching, old bones.

“I fought a war.”

Herman scoffs, and if it is marred with a slight sob he doesn’t admit it to anybody but himself.

“Why?”

He shrugs. “Because it is my duty.”

“ _ Damn  _ your duty!” he near yells, pitching forward, a gnarled hand fisting his peplos with force, command, bringing his limp body up to meet his. He shakes his fist, snarls.

“I’m not doing this for you just so you can go off and sacrifice yourself.”

“Ah, but my love--” and he clutches his cheek, brings a palm up to his to kiss the fingertips, like death would himself.

“--that is only war. Sacrifice with no gain.”

And so it is.

But Herman doesn’t accept it, because he is a stubborn thing of forged steel, struck as such with codes of fire and brimstone. He shakes his head vehemently, draws himself closer until the God of Fire and the God of War share a single breath together. 

“Then put your burdens on me.”

March looks aghast, and he continues, drawings searching hands up his battered body to clutch at his cheek, brushing his scar in calloused palms.

“Everyone does, has--always. It’s just going to be another flame in the pile.” 

He doesn’t smile. Herman never has. But something in him wishes to as March draws closer, clasping their fingers together, and finally, finally meeting their lips. 

There is no thought of diamonds, of blades that will win wars and the damage those wars will bring upon them. There is only softness that he has not known since his mother clasped him to her breast for the brief moment before she let go of her son, the one not beloved and cursed for scathing ego and bruised morals.

For a few long moments, there is nothing. Then, they move further, down into the fire.

And so it begins.

All is fair in love and war.

It’s supposed to be, anyhow.

  
  


_ Continue _

  
  


They begin to carry it on, their infamous affair.

Everyone notices.

Lauren and Kieran watch as the couple arrives together, the God of War on their heels, and promptly, after the rose water is served, the Goddess of Love is the one left alone, the ironic scene playing out like a perfectly written drama.

“Do you think we should say something?”

Kieran scoffs, picking at the mushrooms that sprout from the floor with his feet. “No. Everyone knows, anyhow.”

“I mean--”

“It’s really none of our business.”

He watched her as she cups her hands, spills rose water on her chin as she takes a reluctant sip from her fingers. Then, he sighs.

“Look. The both of them combined just bring too many people to me. I care what they do, as long as they’re not giving me more work.”

Lauren shoots him a look. “Really.”

Kieran shrugs. “It’s the truth.”

“I know that.” 

Then, she looks over at Lila, to where she is sitting, a sly smile on her face as she twines her fingers in red roses.

“I still feel bad.”

“Don’t.”

“ _ You’re  _ just preoccupied because Tristan is staring daggers at you from across the room.”

“Oh, leave him be.”

“Noted.”

———

They are twined between sheets of goosefeather, scars bared. March looks askance at Hermann, notes the shifting marks on his back and chest appreciatively.

“You are like me, then.”

He hums, turns a question at his new lover.

“Scarred.”

Herman nods. 

“That may be so.”

They sit in silence, mapping the stars that emerge from behind the curtain of night and shifting, cloaked day. Then, March breaks the silence again.

“You know--” he stops, turning to his partner, his bedmate amongst the embers.

“You never actually told me your name.”

That tone, it is like years ago, at his marriage. Once again, he reaches for instinct, what he knows and always does.

And then stops.

Perhaps that’s what War and tragedy does to people. Overrides their inclinations and strips them raw, fight and flight and freezing insecurity. 

So, the word is ripped out.

“Hughes.”

“Nice name, Hughes.”

“Thank you.”

———

Lila drags Lukas by his arms, taking him to the back, behind sprawling pillars, shushing him with a hand when he protests.

“Look.” She sneers, holding up painted fingernails.

“I know what they’re doing.”

Lukas scoffs, holding his staff close to his chest as his eyes narrow into twin slits. “I know. Everyone knows, Goddess.”

“So.” She twiddles her fingers at him, and even his cheeks fleck a little with blush at the attention. “Make sure they don’t get any farther than this.”

Lukas scrutinizes her, notes the sly grin to her lips, the devious look in her eyes, and wonders if Love is always this way, if it is always this dangerous to toy with.

“But you hate him, your husband.”

“I do, I think.” She hums. “But I also know that he’s humiliating me. And that needs to stop.”

“Fine, fine.” Lukas raises his head, and his eyes are caught with the fire of the forge already.

“Then it’s a done deal.”

  
  


_ Ending _

  
  


It comes out, their sordid affair. Because of course it does.

When March comes in next, Herman is caught in his terrible temper again. The God of War is made meek by love, and he backs down almost instantaneously, palms raised.

“Why did it have to end like this?” He near growls, standing in pits of dangerous, scorching flame. March draws himself up, sets his shoulders in harpy-like vigor.

“Because it just wasn’t meant to be so, Hughes.”

“ _ Don’t.”  _ He snarls. 

He takes up the blade he’d been working on, bringing it down with a clang onto the hard coal below. It sticks, and he pulls at it until it breaks off in dull pieces, shards of iron flying with the sparks of the volcano in the wind. The world rumbles, the sky lights with red. 

The splintered metal cuts, it burns and flashes with the smelting lava, and Herman stops before he does the irreparable.

If he gave him another scar across his skin, he was sure there would be no turning back. From something like  _ that.  _

He howls with hysterical laughter as the volcano booms, shouts, the wind swirling in a torrential tornado.

Then, he hears it. A shout in the zephyr.

“ _ Thank you!” _

March is laughing, he is  _ laughing,  _ and Herman finds himself still captivated by the chimes and bells of it, even when he knows he’ll never be able to hear it again. 

“You’ve done what I asked of you, in the end!” He shouts, cups his hands in front of his mouth to belt out into the surging waves of heat.

“What?”

“You gave me a weapon I could use to win.”

And it is somber when he leaves, blood red in his wake, the white dove of battle and breakage and death, death too.

———

All’s fair in love and war, they say.

But that’s a lie; that’s a lie, because nothing in the grand game of life can  _ really  _ be fair.

There’s always something, someone, that goes down a path in which they receive less than they gave.

Because that is the art of battle, the nuance of loving things that aren’t yours to love.

Nobody ever, ever wins, because things have been destroyed beyond repair.

_ Fin _

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhh, there it goes. My dignity. What was left of it, anyhow.
> 
> A big thanks! I hate it to viola_lola in the comments of Settle my Score for planting the seed of this idea in my head. And now, as promised in the reply to that very same comment, I will go shoot myself into the sun. See ya
> 
> Comments/kudos are 
> 
> Insta: @artsofisha  
> Contact: artsofisha@gmail.com
> 
> -thumbipeach


End file.
